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Creative Ways to Use Cuttings, Old Plants, and Green Waste
Written by Kelsey W.
Each week, we fill the green bin with yard cuttings and various things that our plants don’t need anymore. The local waste company will take these cuttings away and will usually turn them into compost for various uses or repurpose the cuttings for use in other green projects across the region.
However, you don’t necessarily need to give your green cuttings away each week; you can use the cuttings and pieces you get from your plants for a variety of projects. If you regularly fill your bin and have leftover pieces, these projects can also help you avoid having a super heavy bin that needs dragging to the street.
Not only are some of these projects fun, but a few can actually save you a few dollars over time and help you keep your future plants healthy. Let’s explore some of the ways to use your old plants, cuttings, and green waste from your yard, garden, porch, or balcony.
Don’t Toss Your Cuttings. Keep Your Garden Healthy Instead
One of the easiest ways to employ your old plants is to cut them up, toss them in a pile, and let them turn into a healthy mound of compost for your future plants. Composting is a terrifically easy way to use old plants because you literally don’t have to do anything to the cuttings other than toss them in a pile and leave them to decompose.
Simply provide a shady place for the pile to live and toss some dry leaves into the mixture (you can also use torn up pieces of cardboard – clean cardboard! – if you don’t have extra leaves). After some time, the plant material will decompose and what remains will be an extra healthy mixture of organic material for your plants.
Tip: The best time to add compost to the soil around your plants is in the early spring before they start their serious growing season or in the fall after they’ve completed their growing season.
When you add compost in the spring, it will feed the roots of the plants as they grow, and when you add the compost in the fall, it will keep the soil healthy during the winter months. You can also mix in some compost into the soil each time you put a new plant into the ground, in whatever season that might occur.
Old Cuttings Also Make Liquid Fertilizer
In addition to creating compost from your old cuttings, you can also create a type of “tea” for your plants to drink from the old leaves. All you have to do is put the old leaves in a bucket of water and leave them to “steep” (just as you would a cup of tea), and the water will eventually contain healthy nutrients for the plants.
As the leaves start to break down in the water, they begin to release minerals and components like nitrogen, which are essential for plant growth and natural parts of store-bought fertilizers. To hurry the process along, make sure to add a handful of healthy garden soil to the bucket to jumpstart the process.
To use the mixture, don’t just dump it all out on the soil after a few weeks. First, strain out anything that remains of the old leaves, so you’re just left with the liquid. Then, add some water to dilute the solution. You can usually go with 1 part fertilizer, 10 parts water for an optimal composition.
Make New Plants from Cuttings of Old Plants
Old plants, leggy plants, and dying plants all have something in common: they’re prime candidates for propagation and cuttings. Propagation is the act of taking a piece of an existing plant and making a new plant out of that piece. It’s basically taking a cutting off the plant and making another plant by putting it in water or soil, where it will grow new roots.
Many plants like succulents are quite easily propagated, and it’s a great way to renew your plants when they might otherwise be getting a little leggy or strange-looking. After a while, a plant might start to look as though it’s all stems and almost no leaves.
In such cases, you can cut off a healthy part of the plant and make a new one that won’t appear as leggy, and that will grow in a more visually pleasing or compact manner. While making a cutting isn’t absolutely necessary, it can make a healthier plant if your current plant has become unwieldy or too large.
Creating a cutting is pretty simple and just requires a few steps:
- Make a clean cut of the piece of plant you want to preserve.
- Let the cut end of the cutting scab over for a few days before planting it.
- Place the cutting in a clean glass of water or straight into the soil.
After a few weeks, your cutting should start to develop some roots, eventually growing into a fully-formed plant. Don’t worry if your plant takes a while to start growing; some plants simply take a long time to develop roots. Be patient, and avoid the temptation to overwater, which may contribute to stem rot.
Use Old Cuttings as Décor Around Your Home
Each season, you may end up with cuttings that seem too beautiful to simply toss in the compost heap. If you have a spot available for drying cuttings, you may want to preserve some of the nicer-looking pieces that you cut from your plants, whether they’re entire tree branches or flowers you cut for your indoor arrangements.
Rather than heading into the store to buy a wreath for the front door, you can use the cuttings from your own plants instead to create a wreath. Not only will this save you a few dollars, but the wreath will actually match the décor of your home because it’ll be made of the same plants that surround your house.
If you want to preserve the flowers you cut from your plants outside, there are three simple methods you can use, depending on the way you intend to use the plants once they’re dried.
One option is to flatten the plants between the pages of books, making them suitable for applications like homemade cards or placement under glass tabletops.
Another option is to air dry the blooms by hanging them upside down in bundles. Make sure you hang them in a room that doesn’t get too hot and that’s normally dim or darkened, like a closet.
An additional method for drying flowers is more involved, but it’s something to consider if you want something really visually stunning. That method is called silica drying and involves submerging the blooms in silica gel, which dries the flowers and leaves them looking almost new. Silica is a popular option for drying roses.
The silica drying method does come with the highest price tag, but it’s a project you may want to try at least once, just to see how things turn out.
Be Careful with Diseased Plants
The one caveat about using old plants is that you should always avoid using any material from diseased plants, even if you’re able to clean off the cuttings or pieces to a point where you can’t see any of the disease or bugs or whatever was impacting the plant.
Unfortunately, even when a plant is dead and you’ve removed it from the ground, the disease can still spread if you choose to chop the plant material up and use it as compost or reuse it in some way to benefit your garden.
For the most part, diseased plants that you remove from your garden should always be removed completely from your yard or home because of the risk of infecting other plants. The only time you may want to save a cutting is when you want to try and save a plant by using a non-diseased portion to grow a new plant.
As long as you isolate a cutting that you believe isn’t impacted by disease or infection, you may be able to revive a plant and grow it from a cutting. Many plants are actually easy to grow from cuttings, like tomatoes, hydrangeas, and philodendrons, so it’s worth a try if you have a space to quarantine the plant.
Enjoy a Beautiful Garden with Help from Green Thumb Nursery
With a visit to Green Thumb Nursery, you can create a fun and beautiful garden, whether it’s a few containers of vegetables on your patio or an expansive flower garden in your backyard. Gardening in Southern California means getting to know all sorts of beautiful plants and flowers, and the experts at Green Thumb Nursery are here to help make your gardening projects fruitful, beautiful, and vibrant. Drop by a Southern California location today for advice and assistance on your next gardening project.
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